


battle braided

by Saraste



Series: A month of nwalin [4]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Convalescence, Dwarf Culture & Customs, M/M, Nori is maudlin, Post Battle of Five Armies, braiding, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 19:32:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9199475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: Nori hates convalescence.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to write something NOT angsty today. I blame this on my hip joint pay flaring up today.

Nori has always hated convalescence. 

 

Dwarves are hardy folk and can withstand most of the afflictions which seem to be intent on pestering other races, apart from pebbles who are easy to sicken in the first few decades, even the very old rarely develop the sort of afflictions which seem to sap the life-force of elderly Men. However… Dwarves get injured the same as other races, even if their bones are hardier than those of Men or Elves. Yet they do break and sometimes take their sweet time knitting back together. 

 

The fact is that Nori hates convalescence and the glory of their victory is a bit dimmed by the fact that he was practically run through by a spear during it, just barely missing anything too vital, aid coming before he’d bled to death. It’ll heal if it knows what’s good for it, is what Nori’s thinking. The healers have hemmed and hawed, Óin has been heard muttering to himself, bent over Nori’s middle. 

 

He swings wildly between feverish sleep and fuzzy wakefulness after the battle. There are hands on him often enough, voices, someone reading aloud to him. Dori. Then Ori. Nori could always recognize their fussiness at his bedside. This isn’t his first break. That his siblings are there at his bedside gives his fever-filled mind comfort, to be there they must not be broken too badly.

 

But there is one presence which he’s missing, the absence of which makes something cold settle in his chest when he’s coherent enough, feels like someone yanking at the braid in his hair, woven in on the eve of battle. Yet he doesn’t ask, for if there is no dwarf to braid him more securely, any waking moment that he spends not knowing of his death, if he is dead, is a blessing, a stolen breath of denial.

 

Once, when he’s awake, feeling feverish yet a little less horrible than before, a big hand covers his over the blanket. ‘Not beaten enough to be battle-braided,’ Dwalin says.

 

Nori coughs. His chest feels like it’s on fire. A mug is pressed onto his lips and he gulps down fresh water eagerly. ‘Don’t joke. I could still get worse, you know.’

 

He can tell Dwalin so. Dwalin has the right to know. Dwalin has braided him as his, as he has braided Dwalin as his own. 

 

The hand over his squeezes tight, maybe a bit too tight. ‘Don’t be maudlin.’

 

‘I’m a pragmatist, not maudlin,’ Nori sighs. He looks at Dwalin, at the bandages across his brow, his other hand in a sling across his chest. ‘Battle braid me?’ He doesn’t care if the fighting had been over days ago, has to be, with the fading bruises on Dwalin’s face.

 

He knows what he’s asking. If he should die… He wants to have had this, all of Dwalin. All of his braids. Although the parental braid will have to wait for until he’s better, he’s in no condition to work on stone now. He wouldn’t even be up to making a pebble the way other races do. But he’s up to braiding a braid.

 

Dwalin presses a kiss to his brow, smoothing away Nori’s disheveled hair, loose but for the braids Dwalin had put into it, the touching of which by any other than him would have been an unpardonable insult to them both.

 

‘Of course,’ Dwalin assents. 

 

A knife is procured from somewhere and Nori holds onto the end of the lock Dwalin cuts away from his own hair. Dwalin is surprisingly deft at braiding the bonding braid in with his limited mobility. He puts a Durin blue clasp at the end of one and a bead at the end of the other. Nori gasps through the braiding of Dwalin’s hair, his body really not liking the way his hands are held up for the weaving a dull ache in his middle throbbing insistently. He lays down onto the bedding, gasping, at the end. But Dwalin has his braids now. Nori can die with that knowledge in his heart.

 

‘Don’t go,’ he asks, ‘ _ stay _ .’ 

 

Dwalin seals their marriage with a soft kiss to Nori’s lips and continues to sit by his bed, holding onto Nori’s hand. 

 

As Nori’s eyes drift closed, later, not even the warmth of Dwalin’s hand able to keep him to consciousness, he thinks what a shame it is they’ll not get to work on stone together...

  
  


And… privation, the gnawing ache of not getting enough nourishment, proper rest in proper warmth, that Nori knows about intimately. 

  
  
  
  



End file.
